How about you? How do you deal with the stress of the sudden fame?
The writing group is very helpful. It’s nice to have a writing group, who have been reading my book since the beginning and to whom I’m nothing special so to speak. It is very good keeping one down to earth.
Honestly, having a three-year-old and a one-year-old, being a daddy and having a real life—a normal life—is also really helpful. It keeps you down-to-earth. I mean, it’s hard to think of yourself as Number One New York Times Bestseller when you’re elbow-deep in stinky diaper. Beyond that I do also try to keep a perspective on this. Some people like to pretend that authors are celebrities, but in my mind we’re not really celebrities because if you walk up to the average person on the street and say “Who is Brandon Sanderson?” or “Who is Pat Rothfuss?” or even “Who is George R. R. Martin?” most of them are going to have no idea at all. Such a small percentage of the population actually reads. And beyond that, there’s so many books out there that if they are a reader the chance of them having read your book is small. Everyone knows who Tom Cruise is, but nobody’s going to know who I am. And that’s good for keeping perspective.
The other thing I do to keep perspective is to keep in mind that science fiction and fantasy in particular as a fandom is very much a community. In a lot of ways writers generally grow out of the fan community. Even if they aren’t active in the fan community, they were fans first. Something about that changes the way this all works. A lot of fans rightly seem to act more like colleagues, which is a good way to see it. It’s like the writers are the ones the rest of community supports to produce material for the community. It’s less an idolization of superstars and more of a, “Yeah, we’ll support you, and you create this fiction for the good of the community.” It’s a patron-and-artist sort of relationship. At least that’s how I view it.
I think that’s healthy. From some of your answers, I think you knew a lot about the community before you were published. That probably helped ease your transition a bit. I never knew much about that stuff until I was in the middle of it.
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